JENKINS SCREVEN COUNTY, GA - HISTORY  Camp Lawton Confed Prison

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Camp Lawton
Confederate Prison
1864
    By the summer of 1864 the Confederate prisoner
of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia was acutely
overcrowded with captured Union soldiers. Over
30,000 prisoners were crammed into a 26 acre
stockade, which had originally been constructed to
accomodate 10,000. The combination of lack of food,
shelter and medicine conspired with the overcrowded
conditions to send the mortality rate skyrocketing.

     General John H. Winder, Confederate commissary
general of prisons sought solutions to these
problems. By the end of July he had sent
representatives to scour the countryside in search
of another prison site. Within a week they had found
a seemingly perfect location.

     The selected spot was five miles north of
Millen, Georgia on the present day site of Magnolia
Springs State Park. It featured plentiful amounts of
drinking water, furnished by a naturally flowing
spring which yielded more than 6,000 gallons of
fresh-water per minute. Several slopes above the
spring would allow for the placement of gun
batteries to protect the stockade. The site was also
near the Augusta and Savannah Railroad.

     The new prison was named Camp Lawton and it
would be nearly twice the size of Andersonville.
Winder wrote: "It is, I presume, the largest prison
in the world; it contains 42 acres."

     With the hasty construction complete, prisoners
began to arrive by October 15, Winder informed
Confederate Adjutant-General Samuel Cooper: "We can
with great convenience accomodate 32,000
prisoners...and could without inconvenience increase
it to 40,000."

     These lofty plans, however, were not to be.
William Tecumseh Sherman's Union army had captured
Atlanta that fall. On November 10 he had set out
from there, with his likely objective being
Savannah. This would bring him very near to Millen
and would make Camp Lawton a sure target. Indeed, as
early as October 9, Sherman had written: "I propose
we...stike out with wagons for Milledgeville, Millen
and Savannah...I can make the march, and make
Georgia howl."

     Thus it was that on November 25 Winder reported
that all prisoners thad been evacuated. Days later
one wing of Sherman's army passed through Millen. A
report written on November 8 reveals that 10,229
prisoners had been recieved to that time. At least
486 of these died, 349 enlisted in Confederate
Service and 285 were detailed to work at the post.
The report listed 9,394 prisoners present at the
time.

     The prisoners were all gone and the war ended
by the next spring. Only the dead were left at Camp
Lawton. In 1867 Lawton National Cemetery was created
and 748 bodies interred there. 685 were listed as
casualties of the prison; the rest were victims of
nearby battles. However, within a year, a dispute
over property rights with the previous owner of the
cemetery land forced the removal of all remains to
Beaufort National Cemetery in South Carolina. Thus
ended the saga of the largest prison camp of
America's Civil War.

Today, little remains of the prison stockade; however, the earthen breastworks which guarded it may still be seen.

http://www.geocities.com/magnolia_springs/CampLawton.html

http://gastateparks.org/info/magspr/

Magnolia Springs State Park